Vegas projects Pittsburgh 27-20, with 72% chance to win.
Cards "26 to 1" longshots to have won 3 straight games as underdogs.
Over $10 Billion expected to be wagered.
Las Vegas, Nevada (January 18, 2009) - Super Bowl XLIII is set. The Steelers are favored by 7 points, which is another way of saying that Pittsburgh is expected to beat Arizona by 7 points. The "total" (also called the Over/Under) is 47, which means that both teams combined are expected to score 47 points.
RJ Bell of Pregame.com said: "By considering the game's point spread and total you can derive that Las Vegas expects the final score to be Pittsburgh 27, Arizona 20."
Arizona won 3 straight games as underdogs to reach Super Bowl XLIII. RJ Bell of Pregame.com said: "Considering the Las Vegas odds on the Cardinals' playoff games, the likelihood of Arizona winning all three was 26 to 1 against."
As big favorites in two home games, Pittsburgh had exactly a 50% chance of advancing to the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl is the biggest single-day sports betting event each year. A troubling amount of incorrect information is reported by the news media regarding the actual amount bet on the Super Bowl.
According to RJ Bell of Pregame.com: Over $10 billion dollars is expected to be wagered worldwide on Super Bowl XLIII, by more than 200 million individuals. Less than 1% of that money will be wagered legally in Nevada.
The troubled economy is not expected to greatly affect action on the game. Typically sports betting is affected significantly less than other industries by economic downturns.
MEDIA NOTE: Print, radio, TV, and Internet media should feel free to quote any information above. Please attribute: RJ Bell of Pregame.com. For follow-up questions, or media appearances - email: rjbell@pregame.com
About RJ Bell of Pregame.com
RJ Bell, president of /, has been featured on CBS News with Katie Couric, ABC News with Charles Gibson, Nightline, Sportscenter, Outside the Lines (ESPN), First Take (ESPN2), ESPN.com, ESPN National Radio, Yahoo, AOL.com, CNN.com and in Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Associated Press, Sports Illustrated, LA Times, Newsweek.com, Bloomberg, Maxim, and Forbes.
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